Sonora Pass Emigrants and Tuolumne County Pioneers
1854 Emigrants and the Walker River Trail
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Once word of the hardships of the Walker River Trail had spread through newspaper accounts, emigrants shunned the southern route and chose the more popular Carson River Trail. A few emigrants, though, bound for the Southern Mines, took advantage of the trail. Some were cattlemen, others were families with relatives already in California who had advised them of the route. the best estimates place the number of emigrants to cross over Sonora Pass in 1854 at about 650.
One of the most unusual persons to cross Sonora Pass in 1854 was the man known as Grizzly Adams. Adams, who was living in Tuolumne County at the time, decided to head to the Rocky Mountains on a hunting trip. He and a friend, along with a number of Mi-Wok Indians, ascended the west side of the pass in the spring when considerable snow was still on the ground. They had to chop channels for the wagon wheels and cover the ruts with pine boughs to keep the wagon from sinking into the snow.
Adams brought a couple of tamed grizzly bears tagging along with him. It was his practice to kill adult grizzlies, take their cubs, and raise them as pets. The bears followed behind the wagon, led by tethers. In Adams' rather fanciful account he describes wild animals attacking their campsite and have to fight them off with rifles and knives.
Among the emigrants to cross Sonora Pass that year was James Hamilton Brigss, a nephew of Kit Carson. During a hunting outing on the pass Briggs accidentally shot himself in the arm. It was two weeks before he reached Sonora and was able to obtain medical aid. By then doctors were forced to amputate his arm.
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